Free Republic

1. These notes are based on research by ODI staff on the economic and financial consequences of natural disasters. 2. The geographical scale of the disaster is unprecedented, the loss of life immense and the level of physical damage very significant. 3. However, so far this is not the worst such disaster in modern times - the cyclone and storm surge that hit the coast of Bangladesh in 1970 killed at least 300,000 people. As that disaster showed, many of those killed are poor, and living in places with weak record systems: we will never know the full extent of...

INEVITABLY, confronted with a tragedy of unimaginable scale, the human mind looks for someone to blame. In the Dark Ages, disasters were ascribed to the wrath of God. Now, in an odd inversion that we like to think of as progress, they are adduced as evidence of no God. In the absence of a deity to decry or appease when the earth moves in such devastating fashion, humankind reaches for the next best thing - worldly authority. Authority should have known it was coming. Authority didn't do enough to prevent it. Authority was too preoccupied with its own nefarious priorities...